


together, we can live with the sadness

by defcontwo



Category: Lost
Genre: Gen, Multi, numerous implied relationships, platonic criminal life partners, post-island depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-14
Updated: 2012-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-29 13:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she calls him sawyer and he calls her freckles, always, because james and kate are people that they left behind on that goddamn island, along with the better part of their hearts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	together, we can live with the sadness

**Author's Note:**

> LOST belongs to ABC, JJ Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber, and above all, Messrs Lindelof and Carlton. I'm just the poor schmuck who will never get over this show.

Sluicing rain obscures her vision but does not stop the rage that wells up, the rage that she always keeps close at bay, a feeling that she is intimately familiar with. There are many things in this world that she can’t do, that she will never be any good at, but revenge is not one of them.

 _I saved you a bullet._

\---

It is at that low swooping feeling in her stomach as the plane lifts off, Claire’s hand gripped tightly with her own, when Kate realizes that no matter where else life takes her, it will never bring her back here.

There was a time when that knowledge would have brought nothing but relief - today, it leaves her cold.

\---

There are days when Claire’s gaze goes unfocused, her mind slipping back into the depths of the jungle, when Kate thinks this is too hard, I can’t do this.

But as the song goes, you gotta get out while you’re young, and she is not young, not anymore. She feels so much older than her years and she’s got nowhere to run to - for the first time in her life, that limit feels meaningful, and it stops her in her tracks.

Still, she keeps a bag packed and stuffed into her closet, just in case.

After all, she is not young anymore and the will to change old habits has long since left her.

\---

One cloudy night in mid-november, Sawyer shows up in his pick-up truck and takes her out. It’s a date and they both know it, and she thinks why not, because there is no one else in the world who understands her quite like he does.

They go to dinner at the nearest Olive Garden and go through the motions, making believe that they’re normal and that they can do this. Kate feels tight around the edges, like she’s not at home in her own skin, and it’s rare that being around sawyer makes her feel this way.

They almost make it through their first basket of breadsticks before bursting into laughter, tension bleeding from her as she almost chokes laughing through the complementary water. There is just too much that lies between them. They have long since burned all of these bridges and friendship is the only thing that remains standing.

Sawyer motions for the bill and they spend the rest of the evening at a local dive, downing whisky and scamming drunks playing pool. They are better this way, as gleeful partners in crime, their escapades mere child’s play compared to everything else weighing down their guilty consciences.

\---

She calls him Sawyer and he calls her freckles, always, because James and Kate are people that they left behind on that goddamn island, along with the better part of their hearts.

\---

In the end, none of them stray too far from each other. Claire and Kate open up a shop in Atlanta, for lack of anything better to do, and often Aaron will sit up at the counter with them and charm the hell out of the customers. Sawyer starts up an auto repair business in Savannah to be close to his daughter, and Kate visits him every weekend that Clementine doesn't.

Kate may have Claire but sometimes Sawyer has no one, and Kate can't ever let herself forget that day on the dock. She vows to never let him be alone with the memories for too long. They spend whole days together on his porch, drinking and playing cards in silence, because they are both of them too brittle to try to fix each other.

(Besides, that was always Jack’s job, anyways).

The last any of them had heard, Frank had retired with a last “goodbye, good luck, and don’t ever ask me to fly you jackasses anywhere again.” Miles and Richard are traveling the world, sending postcards and pictures, and Kate still starts to see Richard growing older with each new photo.

It’s not much but it’s something. They are happy, settled, in a way that none of them ever thought themselves capable of.

John had told her once that the island was their salvation. Sometimes, on her best days, Kate thinks that the crazy bastard might have been right.


End file.
